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It may be assumed that pitching every 5 days (on 4 days' rest) is normal for the modern day starting pitcher. That's probably true of the top pitcher on staff, but less so for the bottom of the rotation. Off days and rainouts mean that the bottom end of the rotation is often pushed back - and so many pitchers start a significant number of games on 5 days' rest.


Cory Lidle was the #4 or #5 starting pitcher in Oakland in 2001 and 2002. Traded to Toronto in the off-season, he was promoted to #2 starter.

This season he has pitched exceptionally poorly on 5 days' rest. Immediately, the notion that pitchers are creatures of habit springs to mind. Perhaps Lidle does poorly because he gets out of his rhythm when not pitching every 5th day. Or perhaps he is simply the type of pitcher that is adversely affected by too much rest. A study of the performance of all starting pitchers would be quite instructive, but that will have to wait for another day.

Cory Lidle on 5 days' rest in 2003:


May 8 at Tex .....  6.0 IP 4 Runs (4 ER) 0 HR
May 14 TB ........ 7.3 IP 5 Runs (5 ER) 1 HR
June 4 at Stl ..... 5.0 IP 8 Runs (8 ER) 0 HR
June 10 Pit ....... 6.0 IP 7 Runs (6 ER) 3 HR


Here is how Cory has pitched on various days' rest over the last 2 and a half years.

5 days rest starts  IP  R  ER  HR   W   K   ERA
2001 .......... 9 61.3 28 28 7 14 48 4.11
2002 .......... 7 44.0 22 20 3 5 26 4.09
2003 .......... 4 24.3 24 23 5 5 10 8.51
total ........ 20 129.7 74 71 15 24 84 4.93


4 days rest starts  IP   R  ER  HR   W   K  ERA
2001 ......... 14 91.0 40 33 9 18 50 3.26
2002 ......... 20 127.7 50 45 11 27 75 3.17
2003 ......... 9 62.0 27 24 1 13 44 3.48
total ........ 43 280.7 117 102 21 58 169 3.27


others      starts  IP   R  ER  HR   W   K  ERA
2001 ......... 6 35.7 16 14 7 15 20 3.53
2002 .......... 3 20.3 18 18 3 7 10 7.97
2003 .......... 1 6.0 5 5 3 0 7 7.50
total ........ 10 62.0 39 37 13 22 37 5.37



2001-2003  starts    IP    R  ER  HR  W   K   ERA   K/9  W/9  HR/9
5 days....... 20 129.7 74 71 15 24 84 4.93 5.8 1.7 1.0
4 days....... 43 280.7 117 102 21 58 169 3.27 5.4 1.9 0.7
other........ 10 62.0 39 37 13 22 37 5.37 5.4 3.2 1.9


Cory has had less success on 5 days' rest than when pitching on 4 days rest, but strikeout, walk and homerun rates are nearly the same. I don't think the pattern in evidence this year - 4 poor starts on longer rest - should be expected to continue.

Lidle is back on normal rest (pushing Roy Halladay back a day) for today's rubber match versus the Cubs.



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Coach - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 11:14 AM EDT (#100086) #
It doesn't matter whether it's physical or psychological, the pattern seems consistent. Cory's "other" starts are collectively even worse than with five days' rest, suggesting he's a guy whose routine is extremely important, but it could also be a mechanical issue. Making his last two starts on extra rest meant that he'd pitched just once in twelve days when he faced the Pirates. Not surprisingly, his command was a little off. It's possible for a pitcher to be "too strong" -- your off-speed stuff doesn't move as much when you overthrow it by 2-3 MPH. If Lidle's lights-out this afternoon, Robert's already interesting theory will be hard to ignore.
Pistol - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 11:17 AM EDT (#100087) #
Very interesting. I was ready to say that he's better on 4 days rest until you noted the K, BB, and HR rates were virtually the same, so I would chalk that up to randomness.
_John N. - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 11:58 AM EDT (#100088) #
Wow, great bit of research, Robert. Did you have to go through all the game logs by hand, or is there a site or software package that will tabulate this sort of data for you? Have you done similar studies on other pitchers?

I imagine that there must be a large difference between Cory's 4-day-rest $H and his 5-day-rest $H. I'd also bet that it would be statistically significant (I'm not sure how to square that with DIPS), so I might ascribe more meaning to your results than you do yourself ;)

Are the 10 "other" starts mostly 3 days rest or very long rest? I guess three of them have to be ~180 days rest, and two more are probably long rest because of the All-Star break.
_DS - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 12:27 PM EDT (#100089) #
John,

Couldn't you just count his last spring training start? It's not like he's pitching for the first time since the previous season.
_John N. - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 03:30 PM EDT (#100090) #
DS,

Yes, that occurred to me two minutes after I clicked "Post this comment." It's strange how often that seems to happen ;) I'm sure Robert was taking spring starts into account.

Nevertheless, it may be the case that the first start of the season is often on weird rest. This year's last spring starts and first regular-season starts:

Lidle: Sat. Mar. 22, Tue. Apr. 1 (10 days rest)
Halladay: Wed. Mar. 26, Mon. Mar. 31 (4 days)
Hendrickson: Fri. Mar. 28, Wed. Apr. 2 (4 days)

I can't find the boxscore for the Jays' last preseason game on Sat. Mar. 29 (a 12-12 tie vs. the D-Rays), which was probably started by Tanyon Sturtze. That would have given him 5 days rest before his start on Fri. Apr. 4. I believe that Pete Walker's start on Sat. Apr. 5 was his first since Tue. Apr. 25 (11 days), but he'd pitched relief in the interim as far as I recall.
robertdudek - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 06:33 PM EDT (#100091) #
Yes, I went through the ESPN Cory Lidle page and noted all the 5 dyas and other (I then subtracted these from season totals to get "normal" rest results).

If there's a site from which you could easily download gamelogs from (and into Excel) it wouldn't be very time consuming to do this analysis for all starting pitchers.
robertdudek - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 06:36 PM EDT (#100092) #
Well, for the purposes of this study I considered the pitcher's first start to be "other". Most of the "other" starts were post all-star game, coming back from the minors or (a few cases) pitching on 6 days' rest. I don't think Lidle has started on 3 days' rest.
_Andrew Edwards - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 10:06 PM EDT (#100093) #
Off topic, I'd just like to note that the latest Gammons has Curt Schilling calling a Jay coach to say that he'd really like to play in Toronto.

Wow!
Pepper Moffatt - Sunday, June 15 2003 @ 10:28 PM EDT (#100094) #
http://economics.about.com
Off topic, I'd just like to note that the latest Gammons has Curt Schilling calling a Jay coach to say that he'd really like to play in Toronto.

I'd like to play in Toronto too. I think both have an equal probability of happening this year (zero). Unless Arizona meets the Jays in the World Series.

Mike
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